The former province republic of Hamassien was the political and economic center of Eritrea; judging from excavations in the Sembel area outside Asmara, it has been so since at least the 9th century BC. The earliest surviving appearance of the name "Hamasien" is believed to have been the region ḤMS²M, i.e. ḤMŠ, mentioned in a Sabaic inscription of the Axumite king Ezana.[1][2] The region may have been mentioned as early as Puntite times by Ancient Egyptian records as 'MSW (i.e. "Amasu"), a region of Punt.[2]

During the early medieval centuries, it was ruled by the Raesi`s of the Hazega and Tseazega and the Bahri negasi making their center of administration in Debarwa. According to Francisco Alvares, writing in the early 16th century, the Raesi of the Tseazegas(Habtesulus) had been able to collect tax by extending their authority almost as far as Suakin in modern Sudan. Despite the Emperor of Ethiopia's allegations and grants of control of the country of the Bahri negesitat the Zagwe and Solomonic dynasties, the 1984 "Proceedings of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal of the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples," declares that "There was no administration that connected Hamasin and Serae to the centre of the Ethiopian Kingdom[3] With the decline of the importance of the Midri Bahri in the 17th to 19th centuries, the province enjoyed a period of communal rule under councils of village elders, the so-called shimagile who enforced traditional laws which had prevailed uniquely in the region alongside feudal authority since ancient times.[4] The region appeared in European maps as 'The Republic of Hamasien'. In the late 19th century, Hamasien was briefly invaded and occupied by the Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV who granted control of the region to Ras Alula. Ethiopian forces wrestled for control over the region with Ottomans initially and later with Italian colonialists. Following the death of Emperor Yohannes at the Battle of Gallabat, Hamasien was occupied by the Italians, who incorporated it into their colony of Eritrea and making one of its villages, Asmara, the capital of the colony, a status it retains today as the capital of the sovereign country of Eritrea.[5]

^"Proceedings of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal of the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples". Session on Eritrea. Rome, Italy: Research and Information Centre on Eritrea. 1984.